The Monikins is Cooper’s fourteenth novel. It first appeared in 1835 and represents a return to an American setting after his ‘European trilogy’. It is a strange and fantastical story, concerning the adventures of the self-made Politician and businessman Sir John Goldencalf. Beginning as the story of Goldencalf’s journey from rags to riches, the plot takes a bizarre turn when one of the businessman’s investments (four monkeys bought from an organ grinder) turn out not only to possess the power of speech, but also to hail from a colony of talking monkeys – or Monikins – based somewhere in Antarctica. This signals the novel’s transformation into a Swiftian satire as Goldencalf and his explorer friend, Captain Poke, mount an expedition to this and other strange lands, whose customs and cultures are used as a window on the social and political vagaries of Britain, France and the U.S.A.